I have received your letter of September 20, 1909, and was extremely glad to
hear from you. It is a pity there was no news from you earlier—we are now
terribly isolated here; we tried to get in touch with you and Vyach., but
failed. These are indeed hellishly difficult years and a possibility of
contacts with old friends is ten times more valuable for that reason. I shall
answer your letter point by point. You have seen the newspaper up to December
1908. Since then much water has flowed under the bridge.

With the so-called “Lefts” we have a complete split, which was made
good in the spring of 1909. If you come across my book on philosophy (I sent it
to you immediately it came out, i.e., in the beginning of the summer of 1909)
and the newspaper for 1909, you will hardly say that we are making concessions
to the silly Lefts. There is a complete and formal split with Maximov and the
Maximovites. An out-and-out fight. They may set up their own organ, or they may
not. They are stirring things up in St. Petersburg and Odessa, but they cannot
become a force; it is the death agony of “otzovism-ultimatumism”, in
my opinion. The split with Maximov and Co. cost us no little energy and time,
but I think it was inevitable and will be useful in the long run. Knowing your
views, I think, I am even confident, that we are in agreement here.

As to what you say about it being time to “liquidate the belief in a
second coming of the general-democratic onset”, I definitely do not agree
with you there. You would only be playing into the hands of the otzovists (who
are very prone to such “maximalism”: the bourgeois revolu-
tion is behind us—ahead is the “purely proletarian” one) and
the extreme Right-wing Menshevik liquidators. (Incidentally: have you heard
about the split among the Mensheviks? Plekhanov has left the editorial board of
their newspaper, Golos Sotsial-Demokrata, and the editorial hoard of
their collective work: The Social Movement in Russia in the Twentieth
Century. In August 1909 he published Dnevnik No. 9, where he
called the Mensheviks the accomplices of the
liquidators,[4] and said about Potresov “he is no comrade of mine”, and that
Potresov had ceased to be a revolutionary, and so on. Things with us are moving
towards an alignment with the Plekhanovite Mensheviks with the aim of
strengthening the Party.) But the main thing, in my opinion, is that such a view
is theoretically wrong. The “German line” is possible—without
doubt. And we frankly recognised that as early as the beginning of 1908. But
this possibility can become a reality only through a number of
“general-democratic” onsets (or upsurges, or crises, etc.) just as
France came to the end of the “general-democratic” onsets not after
1789-93, but after 1871 (i.e., after 1830, 1848, and 1871), and Germany not in
1849-50, but also after 1871, i.e., after the
Verfassungsstreit[1]
of
the sixties. Struve, Guchkov and Stolypin are trying their hardest to
“copulate” and produce a Bismarckian Russia—but nothing comes
of it. Nothing. They’re impotent. All the signs show, and they themselves admit,
that nothing comes of it. Stolypin’s agrarian
policy[5] is
correct from the point of view of Bismarckianism. But Stolypin himself
“asks” for 20 years to make something “come of it”. But
twenty years, and even a shorter time, is impossible in Russia without
1830-1848-1871 (if in the French style) and 1863-1865 (if in the German
style). It is impossible. And all these dates (both 1830-1848-1871 and
1863-1865) are a “general-democratic onset”.

No, we cannot “liquidate” the idea of “a general-democratic
onset”—that would be a cardinal mistake. We should recognise the
possibility of a “German line”, but we should not forget that so far
it does not exist. It simply
does not. We should not link the destinies of the proletarian party with the
success or failure of the bourgeois revolution—that is indisputable. We
should organise the work so that, whatever the turn events take, it will be a
stable, unalienable achievement—that is true. But we are obliged to do our
duty as leaders of a democratic, “general-democratic”, movement
right to the end, until the Russian 1871, until the complete turn of the
peasantry to the side of an
Ordnungspartei.[2]
And such a turn, as far as
Russia is concerned, is still a long way off! We cannot deny the possibility
of a “German”, that is to say, a “rotten”, solution of
“general-democratic” problems, but we are obliged to do
everything, we are obliged to work long and hard in order that this
solution will be not “rotten”, not German, but French, i.e., that of
the 1830-1848-1871 type, and not of the 1863-65 type (merely a
“constitutional” crisis). There is no guarantee that our 1863-65
will turn out to be “rotten” or successful, but it is our business,
the business of the working-class party, to do everything to make the
“rotten” develop into the successful, to make the
German Verfassungsstreit develop into a real French scrimmage. There
are no historical laws to prevent a rotten crisis from turning into a real
scrimmage. There are no such laws. Every thing depends on the circumstances, on
the mass of poor peas ants (whom Stolypin has suppressed but not satisfied), on
the strength of the workers’ party, on the conditions, friction and conflicts
between Guchkov and the “spheres”, etc., etc. We should see to it
that we are stronger (and by the time of our 1863-1865 we shall be stronger than
the Germans were then), and that the peasants then do what we tell them, and not
what the liberals tell them. Only the struggle will decide how far this will be
achieved. We shall demand everything in the sense of a “general-democratic
onset”: if successful we shall gain everything, if unsuccessful,—a part; but, in going into battle, we must not confine ourselves to
demanding a part. To build in a new way, to organise in a new way, to enter the
crisis in a new way—such is the crucial feature of the moment,
but all the old
slogans, the demand for “everything”, must be maintained,
developed and strengthened.

Notes

[3]Skvortsov-Stepanov, Ivan Ivanovich (1870–1928)—one of the
oldest participants in the Russian revolutionary movement, a Marxist
writer. Joined the revolutionary movement in 1892; from, the close of 1904
a Bolshevik. In 1906 a delegate to the Fourth (Unity) Congress of the
R.S.D.L.P., at which he adopted a Leninist stand. In the period of reaction
(1907–10) adopted a conciliatory attitude towards the Vperyod
faction, but under the influence of Lenin he rectified these errors. He was
repeatedly arrested and exiled for his revolutionary activities.

After the October Socialist Revolution he occupied important government and
Party posts.

[4]Liquidators—adherents of an opportunist trend dominant among the
Mensheviks during the period of reaction following the defeat of the first
Russian revolution of 1905–07. They demanded the liquidation of the
revolutionary illegal party of the proletariat and the creation in its
stead of an opportunist party operating legally within the framework of the
tsarist regime. Lenin and other Bolsheviks untiringly denounced the
liquidators, who were betraying the cause of the revolution. The Prague
Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (January 1912) expelled the liquidators from
the Party.

[5]Meaning Stolypin’s agrarian reform aimed at using the kulaks as a bulwark
of the regime in the countryside. The tsarist government issued a Ukase on
November 9 (22), 1906, regulating the peasants’ withdrawal from the
communes and the establishment of their proprietary rights on the allotment
lands. Under this Stolypin law (which got its name from P. A. Stolypin,
Chairman of the Council of Ministers) the peasant was free to with draw
from the village commune, take possession of his allotment on a
proprietorship basis, and sell it. The rural community was obliged to give
the peasants who withdrew from the commune an allotment of land in one
place (an otrub, homestead). The Stolypin reform speeded up the
development of capitalism in the countryside and the process of
differentiation among the peasantry, and sharpened the class struggle in
the village. The Stolypin reform is characterised and evaluated in a number
of works by Lenin, notably in his The Agrarian Programme of
Social-Democracy in the First Russian Revolution, 1905–1907^^See
Vol. 13 of this edition)^^.